I am the longtime Managing Editor at HotHardware.com. I am also a freelance writer whose work has been published worldwide, in a number of PC and tech-related print publications. I have been a computing and technology buff since my early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the C64 some 30 years ago, I was interested in electricity and electronics, and still have the modified AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once I got my hands on my first Commodore 64, however, computing became my passion. Throughout my academic and professional lives, I have explored virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high-end, multi-core servers. Over the years, I have worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, quality assurance testing, and technical writing.

Scamming Fake Microsoft Support Scammers

For the last few months, I’ve heard numerous stories from friends, family, and clients about calls they’ve supposedly received from Microsoft. Unfortunately, the calls are all scams that can have dire consequences. If you haven’t heard similar stories, they usually go something like this: a person calls and says that he is a tech with MicrosoftMicrosoft that’s contacting you because your Windows-based computer is infected with a virus and he wants to help fix it. Over the course of the conversation, he’ll ask to remote into your PC, and ultimately tell you that the level of support required to fix it requires payment and that you’ll have to provide a credit card number. More nefarious scammers will then go the extra mile and install spyware on your machine to snag your passwords and other personal information, which could then be used to access your bank accounts or even steal your identity.

Well, I just got off the phone with a couple of these scammers.

Of course, I knew right out of the gate that the call was a sham. The odds of Microsoft ever calling an end-user out of the blue are about as likely as Bill Gates giving away millions of dollars on Facebook because you shared a photo, so that’s the first clue. But I’m also experienced enough to know when a so-called technician doesn’t know his gigabits from gigabytes, and it wouldn’t have taken long to figure out the caller was full of it anyway.

Just in case you find yourself the target of one of these phone scams, or you want to inform your not-so-tech-savvy acquaintances about the possibility, I figured it would be beneficial to let you all know how the call went down. When I answered the phone, a heavily accented fellow explained that he was with Microsoft and that my ISP has contacted them because a Windows machine using my broadband connection was infected with a virus. He asked me to go to my Windows PC and requested that I perform some mundane tasks, like opening the web browser, and hitting a couple of websites–all the while telling me what I should expect to see on-screen. I assume this was some sort of half-witted ploy to gain my trust, but there was no chance of that happening. While the scam-artist was trying to prove his worth, I used the time to check e-mail and post the happenings live on Facebook. I thought I’d waste as much of the guy’s time as possible, to prevent him from calling someone else and having more success.

Many of the entries listed in Event Viewer are innocuous.

After a while “checking websites” the scammer then had me open Event Viewer. He tried to explain the importance of the information contained in Event Viewer’s logs, and then used a rudimentary scare tactic that I suspect would work on casual PC users. He asked how many entries were in the system log (to which I happily answered 1337!), and tried to convince me that all of those entries were errors caused by the virus. He then took a more dire tone and asked me to check the Security and Application logs (again, I gave bogus numbers of 43 and 666!).

This was the point where the real scam was about to start. The caller used the number of events listed in Event Viewer to claim that the “infection” on my system was more severe than anticipated and that there would be a charge for any tech support services moving forward. He then asked for a credit card number. I refused to give him one and said I would only pay upon completion of the clean-up. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to keep him on the line as long as possible, but I also wanted to see what tactics these low-lives were using to scam people. After my charade, the original caller put me on hold and said he had to forward me to a tech support manager who would continue to help me out.

The second man to take the line then directed me to ammyy.com and asked me to install some remote desktop software. I should point out that ammyy.com is totally legit (and actually a great tool), but the scammer planned to use it for no good. I went so far as to install the ammyy.com remote desktop client, so I could see what a correct user ID looked like, but did not give the caller the correct ID. I fed him some false IDs (again, to waste more time), and ultimately told the caller to megabyte me (in not so kind words) and they hung up after sharing a few choice words. Had I given him the correct ID, the caller would have been able to instantly access my PC.

If I was better prepared and had a virtual machine setup that I could sacrifice for the cause, I would have let the scammers do their thing and let them believe they’d infiltrated another unfortunate soul’s computer, but I wasn’t. It’s a shame too, because it would have been useful to see what (and where) they’d download and install. Regardless, I hope this little bit of information helps. If you’re the recipient of one of these calls, at least now you’ll know they are a scam, and if you have a little time of your hands you can waste the scammers’ time and limit the number of other folks they can prey on. And if you’ve already been targeted, be sure to check your system for malware and report the call to the FTC at 1-877-FTC-HELP.

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